Each and every time Google updates it search engine algorithm, the content of your website comes into sharp focus. A site that values its clients and seeks to offer valuable content must strive to remain relevant and top quality at all times. The major changes by Google are bound to affect any SEO-focused content strategy and are all contained in the three major algorithm updates over the past couple years: Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird.

These mechanisms are all geared towards better ensuring the quality and relevancy of the content contained in a website. To help ensure you adopt an SEO-friendly content strategy for 2014, below are some key considerations to stand by.

Avoid Duplicate Content

This falls directly under the Panda domain. Because the internet is awash with sites that produce tons of useless, low quality content; Google through Panda checks on content that’s been duplicated. It is thus important to stay clear from such tactics and strive to develop your own uniquely written articles all the time. If you have to engage the services of an article writer, make sure you use legit writers.

It is also important to provide unique Meta descriptions and requisite page titles for all your webpages and articles. Because at times you may have to duplicate some pages, ensure you use resources such as the robots.txt file to hide such pages from Google.

Include Enough Text-based Content

This also concerns the mechanisms adopted by Panda. Previously, there were sites that would thrive in having short, keyword rich articles that did not make any sense to the user at all but would attract lots of traffic. With Panda around, one must keep articles relatively long and well detailed; in the process ensuring that the contents of an article add value to the reader. Having rich media content such as relevant images and videos is also recommended. Such non textual content should also be formatted appropriately so as to be seen easily by search engines.

In case you have pages that are meant for interaction purposes, avoid the temptation of leaving them without content. Ensure all your pages have some relevant content at all times for the best SEO results. It is also worth noting that content should be updated frequently so as to provide users with up-to date information.

Never Stuff Keywords in Content

Penguin was developed to detect and deter web spam. Previously, some sites would stuff their content with relevant keywords so as to manipulate Google rankings. To avoid having on-page SEO problems regarding keywords, one should always strive to use descriptive page titles rather than listing keywords in the page titles. If you are using Meta descriptions, use them appropriately for call to action activities rather than filling them with your associated keywords.

If you have to use alt tags of images, make sure you don’t use stand alone keywords; make a point of using only a descriptive alt tag when necessary. There is also a tendency to overuse the H1 tag, as much as it is ok to fit keywords into these tags, don’t get them into every subtitle or page; that will be considered keyword stuffing.

Do Thorough Keyword Research

To make your site and content Hummingbird friendly is by thoroughly researching your chosen keywords and getting their associated synonyms and other co-occurring terminologies. This is because through Hummingbird, Google not only searches for content based on Keywords but also uses other theme related terms to get associated and relevant sites.

To get the search terms, Google will consider words that are synonymous with your chosen keyword. To help you get these terms, one should try and search for the keyword using Google; then take note of the acronyms and other different spellings that appear after the search. Tools such as Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools can help you get appropriate synonyms for your chosen SEO keyword targets.

Cover All Keyword Query Types

Hummingbird assumes and defines all searches or queries made on the internet to be either informational (where a user seeks to get some general information), Navigational (where a user is looking for a certain site) or Transactional (where a user wants to run a particular transaction).

When creating content for your site, it is important to develop content that covers each of the above mentioned queries. You can achieve this by finding out the most common conversational phrases clients are bound to use when searching for your content or service and using most of them appropriately within your content.

SEO is a unique marketing channel that's ultimately all about keeping up with the times. The truth is that things change in the SEO community every single year, and usually just a few weeks is all that it takes before Google makes a new update.

The Panda and Penguin updates have evolved over the years and many SEO's have dropped off the face of the earth as a result. Survivors who take these tips (which have been gathered from Google itself,) can see what Google wants site owners to focus on and what you as an SEO can do to get ranked successfully.

The Do's for Good SEO

Keep up with Great Content Make it a goal to create quality content. In other words, remember that content is king. Google is working extra hard to make sure that quality written sites are the ones ranking.

Code Should Be Clean Keep your overall coding clean and SEO-friendly. You don't want too much going on that Google spiders gets confused when they land on a code-heavy, slow-loading site. If that describes your sites, than invest in the services of a website optimization company.

Upload Videos On Multiple Pages With a video, Google sees your site with a ton more authority simply because they are synced with YouTube, in addition to videos offering greater value and user engagement. If your YouTube video has potential to rank and it happens to be on your new page or blog post, they'll both be ranking at the top for keywords.

Create Additional Pages To Rank A lot of people try to rank their first main URL, but that isn't the only part of your site that you can rank. You can instead create additional pages and then optimize that page to be ranked. The more pages ranking for individual keywords, the stronger your main URL will be to rank for some of the other keywords you want to be ranking for. A good example of this is Traverse City SEO company TCTopofMind.com and how they ranked an educational blog post for their primary keyword target "Traverse City SEO" as a unique lead acquisition strategy.

The Dreaded Don'ts of SEO

Create Duplicate Content Stop pasting other peoples articles on your site. It only hurts you in the end. Google wants to give you more maximum exposure, but if you are using other peoples content that is already indexed, it only shows Google that you are spamming your site with used content.

Build Thousands of Sketchy Backlinks Oftentimes, people will try to get hundreds or even thousands of backlinks from backlink sites and social media softwares, but that isn't always the best thing to do. You might as well go slowly but try to keep it more consistent.

Forget About On-Page SEO Do not just focus in backlinks. Make sure that your site up to date with great content and that every tag is cared for. Make sure those tags have keywords, alt text for images, h1 tag on every page, and other on site SEO.

Write For Search Engines Trying to push keywords on every single part of the search engine is not going to benefit you in any way. It will only hurt you in the long run. Writing for the search engines meant to constantly put in keywords in every sentence, but this only hurts your chances with Google. It may have worked in the early 2000's, but it won't work anymore in this generation.

Google is always changing, but the above tips should definitely be up to date and still stay relevant for years to come. Google has some extremely careful algorithms to make sure only the right sites rank, but the tips above should help bring you to the top with ease.